The disclosed embodiments relate generally to a method for operating a print processing system and, more specifically, to a method of partitioning a print job stream in a print production environment.
Document production environments, such as print shops, convert printing orders, such as print jobs, into finished printed material. A print shop may process print jobs using resources such as printers, cutters, collators and other similar equipment. Typically, resources in print shops are organized such that when a print job arrives from a customer at a particular print shop, the print job can be processed by performing one or more production functions.
Scheduling architectures that organize print jobs arriving at a document production environment and route the print jobs to autonomous cells are known in the art and are described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,051,328 to Rai et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 7,065,567 to Squires et al., the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety.
It is common for print shops to receive a wide variety of print jobs from a variety of clients. Typically, each client has specific production requirements. Variation in these requirements can cause significant processing delays even when resources have been allocated to balance the job flow. Jobs, particularly print jobs, can have a number of different setup characteristics, and each setup characteristic may correspond to several different characteristic types. Significant setup delays can arise in processing jobs with variable setup characteristics in a production environment. Setup time can be particularly acute in production environments where substantial interruption in operation is unacceptable, such as environments that utilize continuous feed equipment. Setup delays can significantly impact throughput, particularly in light of the high processing rates of continuous feed equipment.
Transaction print environments that process jobs having a heavy-tailed job-size distribution tend to have inefficient job flows. This is because these environments typically handle very large and very small jobs that are all part of one job pool. It is likely that several small jobs may be delayed if they are queued behind a very large job. Similarly, large jobs can experience flow interruptions if several small jobs requiring multiple setups are ahead of the large jobs in the queue.